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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2824 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 9, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Slezkine's The Jewish Century. Also adding Taylor's Sources of the Self to my list. Backlog moving slowly.

During my latest digital fast, I tried to read The Man Who Was Thursday. Put it down after just a couple of pages, because I couldn't stand Chesterton's insufferable smugness. Is he always like that?

Lazily going through How Not to Write a Novel. There's only so many jokes you can make about a badly written novel, and my patience with the authors' sense of humor is wearing thin.

Put it down after just a couple of pages, because I couldn't stand Chesterton's insufferable smugness.

I am filled with deep sorrow for your affliction. To be cut off from sources of joy due to incompatibility - alas!

Surprised by your reaction to the latter. I've read it so many times there are entire passages I can quote from memory. One of the funniest books I've ever read. I also thinks it contains a great deal of genuinely useful writing advice, much of which is applicable to all kinds of prose (not just fiction).

America against America by Wang Hunig Chinas chief ideologue, worth a read both to see another perspective and since it was written in ‘91 it’s basically history now.

Finished The Screwtape Letters - extremely illuminating and thought-provoking book. On the lighter side, continued my quest through the Dresden Files with the Ghost Story. Dresden seems to reach peek goofiness in this one, it's a fun read but in the terms of universe/character development it seems to walk in circles. Hopefully it's a gravity assist maneuver for what's to come next.

Started The Seventh Function of Language - sounds to be fun so far, though a lot of it might be outside my depth, as I am not that knowledgeable in the details of contemporary French philosophy and linguistics and its personalities. I know the names but I think a lot of stuff he's making fun of them for goes right over my head.

Finished The Screwtape Letters - extremely illuminating and thought-provoking book.

It's a good one. Even entirely leaving aside the theological frame, this quote:

The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

...is a notable piece of cosmic horror, and in my experience observably true.

I've been meaning to read Screwtape. Out of interest, how long was your copy, and how long did it take you to read it?

I used an audiobook on Libby, it's about ~4 hours long and I listened to it in several takes.

On the lighter side, continued my quest through the Dresden Files with the Ghost Story. Dresden seems to reach peek goofiness in this one, it's a fun read but in the terms of universe/character development it seems to walk in circles.

IDK, for my money, Ghost Story does develop most of the main characters of the series, It's a Wonderful Life Style, but moreover, it contains one of, if not the, most powerful scene(s) in the series at its climax thus far -- revealing to Harry the pain and suffering he caused Molly, specifically, by asking her to bear the burden of assisting him in his attempt at suicide-by-proxy via calling in the favor that Kincaid owed him, and having her erase it from his memory so he wouldn't know to look out for his own assassination. It's still my favorite of the series, and may well stay that way unless Butcher pulls another rabbit out of his hat like that one.

And FTR, the other two scenes that, for me, compete with the previous one are Harry's first meeting with Uriel in Small Favor and Murphy's Death and Butter's subsequent intervention preventing Harry from killing Murphy's murderer in Battle Ground.

About the Molly part - I still can't believe he did it to her. I mean dude, she's still a kid, couldn't you find some other way? I mean it's a very clever twist, I grant that, but it doesn't reflect well on Harry tbh. He is usually choosing to be decent to most people around him, and when the situation calls for being shitty, that's where he decides to turn to? I didn't feel good about it. Also, it means that not only the Corpsetaker problem had been made much worse by Harry, but the whole shitshow is actually of his making, and he doesn't even have a good reason for it, as it turns out. If he did exactly nothing, he'd be pretty much in the same place as he was at the end, except with much less casualties. That's a bit like this one: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kWE6M-rhh2U

Oh, I completely agree, and this is what makes the moment so poignant for me: Harry knew exactly what we was doing when he asked, knew that what he needed, what he was asking for was completely unfair to ask of Molly, and he asked it anyway. And as a result, things got a lot worse, for Chicago in general as well as for his friends in particular. If Butcher hadn't spent so much time and so many novels developing those relationships, the book never would have worked, but because he did, that book in general and the climax in particular played my personal heart strings like a fiddle, and that's what makes me love him as an author so much: he tends to put the work into his character development, making those moments pay off when they hit. Throughout the series, Harry fucks up a lot, his choices have consequences, sometimes big ones, and sometimes, like in Ghost Story he has good reason for his choices, like, y'know, saving his daughter from the Red Court at all costs, selling his soul to do so, and trying to cheat Mab herself out her prize! YMMV and all, but for me, when I think of the things that I've read that have personally moved me, Clive Barker's Imajica is the only one that comes quickly to mind that isn't a Dresden Files book.

I think in the most recent books, Harry is finally starting to grow up. He's a great guy and his heart is in the right place, but he has a long history of making really, really bad decisions.

And a lot of that is due to his background, where his mentor DuMorne very carefully shaped him to distrust and confront all authority, thus cutting him off from a lot of sources of information and education he badly needed as he was developing. This left Harry with a smart-ass attitude that, even without all the other strikes against him, would put him at loggerheads with anyone and any body he saw as trying to be the boss of him, so that even now there are breadcrumbs throughout the novels of things he should know but doesn't. He also has severe White Knight Syndrome where any baddie can easily manipulate him by putting a woman or innocent person in danger. Harry relies on the strength of his talents and magic to just bulldoze an answer to any problem, and while that was okay when he was going up against evil mages, he is now on a completely higher and more dangerous level where he will have to use his brain instead.

I like Harry, but there were times in the books when I wanted to slap him due to his "don't think, just bulldoze" approach (and eh, his views on women; there's a few too many Fridged Exes in his life but then again Butcher has been writing this character over a very long time and when he started, Harry was your typical mid-20s guy who likes tits and beer. It was fun urban fantasy with a male character as written by a guy and wasn't really intended to be anything more serious than that, I don't think.)

Julien Gracq, The Opposing Shore. Started strong, then the fantasy world really started to drag for quite a while, but now it's getting interesting as the mysterious, beautiful, aristocratic woman enters and throws everything into chaos, as is wonderfully mandatory for mid-century European literature. Two big departures from Gracq's A Balcony in the Forest: long and overwrought descriptive passages, which I honestly just don't enjoy, and a protagonist who isn't afraid to be genuinely unlikeable at times. He's angry, snippy, and petty exactly when you want him to learn more and get people to open up to him about what's going on. Overall, I'm interested in seeing where things go, but I don't think it'll top A Balcony in the Forest for me, if only because that book has the indisputably perfect setting (the Phoney War) for Gracq's style.

I have attempted to finish The Opposing Shore on, I think, four separate occasions since I was a teenager. I have never managed to do it. But yeah, there is something about the world he created that keeps dragging me back there. I'll finish it some day.

If you enjoy Gracq, I would be curious to know what you think about The Shipyard by Juan Carlos Onetti. The two novels have, to me, an extremely similar "vibe."

Thank you, I will put it on the list! Honestly, I strongly considered putting The Opposing Shore down around 15% through (I'm reading on a kindle, no page numbers), but now things are heating up I'll keep going. Have you tried A Balcony in the Forest?

I checked it out from the library once about five years ago, and as I recall, I did not actually attempt to read it; for which I am somewhat embarrassed, honestly.

If I remembering correctly, I did penance for shying away from what, at the time, I feared would be too difficult a book for me, by reading Joseph Conrad's Victory. Victory had various positive attributes, particularly the impressive characterization of the characters Heyst, Ricardo, and Wang; but I found it rather weakly plotted and the ending was very unconvincing, and I would not go so far as to recommend it.

Yes, I read Victory when I was a teenager absolutely enamoured of Conrad, and even then I felt it was distinctly weak. Balcony is a really, really good read imo.

A Storm of Swords for my third reread+ a Spanish audiobook about the Isabella of Castille learning chess (El tablero de la reina). The former is as awesome as I remember it, and Tywin comes off worse and worse on each reread. The latter is okay, but very Ken Follett-coded and I don't believe the characters are real medieval people.

Finished The Mothman Prophecies during the week. Good spooky fun, although I hardly believe a word of it. Makes me want to watch the film for the umpteenth time, though I'll have to wait for spooky season. The "prophecies" part of the title refers to how various contactees reported foreknowledge of assorted international events after interacting with Indrid Cold and co. I had to laugh when the first example used to illustrate these entities' supposed prescience was something along the lines "there will soon be a major escalation of one of the conflicts in the Middle East".

My word. Who but a clairvoyant alien superintelligence could have predicted such a thing!

A few months ago on a whim I bought the comic book The Con Artists by the Irish artist Luke Healy, which I read from start to finish on my evening commute the same day I finished Mothman. It concerns two gay men who were childhood friends, one of whom fractures his arm after being hit by a bus, an incident that in turn exposes thitherto unacknowledged tensions in their friendship. Aggressively millennial: the protagonist is a shitty standup comedian who claims to suffer from an anxiety disorder, but can't stop cracking self-deprecating jokes during his therapy sessions. The artwork was clean and minimal to the point of lacking character. Healy is talented both in writing and artwork, but I think he could benefit from getting off Instagram and trying to carve out a more unique identity of his own.

On to The Age of Diagnosis by the Irish physician Suzanne O'Sullivan. My fiancée attended a talk by her to promote this book and was very impressed: she read this one before I did. O'Sullivan's thesis will be familiar to many of us here: medics now diagnose and prescribe more than they ought, characterising problems as medical disorders when previous generations just considered them personality traits or the ordinary slings-and-arrows life throws at us. The first chapter concerns the ethical dilemmas surrounding whether to get tested for Huntington's disease. O'Sullivan's prose sometimes reads like a case history, and she has an annoying predilection for sentence fragments which should have been caught by a copy-editor, but I'm interested to see what ground she covers and how deep into the culture war she goes (in the introduction she touched on "long Covid" and the skyrocketing rates of autism and ADHD diagnoses).

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